The Skull Throne
Page 57

She reached into her pouch for the dice with her left hand, drawing her curved dagger with her right. “Hold out your arm.”
The khaffit paled visibly, but he did not dare refuse. When the hora were wet with his blood, he watched in horrified fascination as she shook them and they began to glow.
“Everam, Creator of Heaven and Ala, Giver of Light and Life, your children need guidance. Should we follow the khaffit’s plan and attack the city on the lake?”
The dice flared as she threw, spinning out of their natural trajectory as the magic took them. It was a familiar sight to Inevera, but Abban gaped as she scanned the symbols for an answer.
—Unless given something to fight, the Sharum will tear themselves apart.—
A surprisingly clear answer, for the dice had been opaque of late, but vexing all the same. They stopped short of endorsing the move.
She shook again. “Everam, Creator of Heaven and Ala, Giver of Light and Life, your children need guidance. Will an attack on Lakton be successful?”
—The city on the lake will not fall easily, or without wisdom.—
Inevera stared at the symbols. Wisdom was not easily found in the armies of the Deliverer.
“What do they tell you?” Abban asked.
Inevera ignored him, gathering the dice. “This still leaves us with a rebellion on our hands, and a risk that Jayan will return with increased glory and an even stronger claim to the throne.”
Relief flooded Abban’s aura. He believed her convinced. “You will have an easier time rooting out the rebels with Jayan far away. A chance to secure your own power.” He grinned. “Perhaps we will be lucky, and he will catch a stray arrow.”
Inevera slapped him, her nails drawing blood as the fat khaffit was knocked from the pillows. He held his face in pain, eyes wide with fear.
Inevera pointed at him, calling a harmless but dramatic flare of wardlight from one of her rings. “However he may vex me, have a care when you speak of my oldest son, khaffit.”
Abban nodded, rolling to his knees with a wince and putting his forehead on the floor. “I apologize, Damajah. I meant no offense.”
“If I regret this decision even a little, khaffit, you will regret it ten thousandfold. Now be gone from here. The council will meet soon, and I will not have you seen skulking from my chambers.”
The khaffit gathered his crutch and limped from the room as quickly as his lame leg would allow.
When the door closed behind him, she bent to the dice again. She had not cast for her husband’s fate in over a day, but it would have to wait longer still. With this latest attack and Abban’s mad plan, it was easy to forget it was the first day of Waning. If it was anything like the last, her people would be lucky to survive without Ahmann.
“Everam, Creator of Heaven and Ala, Giver of Light and Life, your children need guidance. What will Waning bring to Everam’s Bounty this night, and how can we prepare?”
She shook and threw, reading the meanings behind the symbols as easily as words on a page.
—Alagai Ka and his princelings will not come to Everam’s Bounty this Waning.—
Curious. Her eyes scanned the rest of the symbols and she started. For the first time in weeks, the one day she had not cast for Ahmann’s fate, the dice gave her a glimpse.
And her world collapsed.
—They go to defile the corpse of Shar’Dama Ka.—
Abban watched the Andrah’s closed circle of advisors—Asome, Asukaji, Aleverak, and Jayan—from the safety of his small writing desk in the shadow of the Skull Throne. The open circle, including all twelve Damaji, would not be called until Inevera took her place and the internal debate finished. Already Abban could hear them bickering in the hall.
Both circles tended to ignore Abban unless he spoke, and some of them even then. Abban was wise enough to encourage this, speaking only when spoken to, a rare thing now that Ahmann was gone.
Inevera had been in her chamber a long time. What in Nie’s abyss could be keeping her? There were riots in the streets, and the Damaji were close to losing control.
“First they strike us at night,” Aleverak shouted, “and now on the first day of Waning, profaning the bones of our heroes and the very temple of Everam! It is outrageous!”
“No thing happens, but Everam wills it.” Damaji Asukaji’s forearms had disappeared up the wide opposite sleeves of his robes, clutching his elbows as he had taken to doing now that he and Asome were forced to stand apart. Leader of the largest tribe in Krasia, his smooth faced betrayed a boy of but eighteen. “It is a sign we must not ignore. The Creator is angry.”
“This is what comes of being gentle with the chin after their cowardly attacks on the sharaji!” Jayan said. “Our show of weakness has only emboldened them to further aggression.”
“For once, I must agree with my brother,” Asome said. “The attack on Sharik Hora cannot go unanswered. Everam demands blood in response.”
Everam, Abban prayed as he penned their words, set a cup of couzi before me now, and I will give one of my wives to the dama’ting.
But as ever, the Creator did not listen to Abban. All of them, Jayan, Asome, Asukaji, were children forced into roles beyond their experience. They should have had Ahmann’s guiding hand for decades to come. Instead, the fate of the world might rest upon their shoulders.
He suppressed a shudder at the thought. “He shall have a lake full of it.” None had noticed the Damajah exit her private chamber. Even Abban had been unaware, though she stood mere feet from him. He only glanced at her a moment, but it was long enough to note she had applied fresh makeup, though it did not mask entirely the puff around her eyes.
The Damajah had been weeping.
Everam’s beard, he thought. What in Heaven, Ala, and Nie’s abyss could make that woman weep? Had she been a lesser woman, he might have attempted to offer comfort, but he respected the Damajah too much for that, and turned back to his parchment, pretending not to notice.
The others, oblivious, had no need to pretend. “Have you found the rebels at last, Mother?” Jayan asked.
Abban did not have Ahmann’s ability to see into hearts, but such skills were hardly necessary to read the eager gleam in the young Sharum Ka’s eyes. Jayan stood to win threefold this day. Once for appearing right when all his rivals were wrong, once for the glory he stood to gain when he quelled the rebellion, and once for his brutal nature, which already relished the prospect of inflicting pain and suffering on the chin.
“The rebels are puppets.” Inevera rolled her dice thoughtfully in her hand. “Vermin placed in our silos by our true enemies.”
“Who, Mother?” Jayan could not hide the eagerness in his voice. “Who is to blame for these cowardly attacks?”
Inevera called a touch of power from the dice, causing them to glow. They cast her face in an ominous light that lent the will of Everam to her answer. “Lakton.”
“The fish men?” Ashan gaped. “They dare strike at us?”
“They were warned by Leesha Paper,” Inevera could not keep the venom from her voice at the name, “that we might attack as soon as spring. No doubt the dockmasters seek to sow discord to keep our armies at home.”
It was perfectly plausible, if patently false—at least so far as Abban knew. He suppressed a smile as the others accepted the accusation without question.